


Rabbit's Head

by Sedaris



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Freak Show
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2664425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sedaris/pseuds/Sedaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into Jimmy's favorite winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabbit's Head

**Author's Note:**

> I've only watched the episode where Jimmy talks about the freak show's extended winter stay once, so I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, or how much of an age difference there's supposed to be between him and Ma. But, like, whatever, honestly. 
> 
> I had fun. Hope you do, too.

Despite what everybody thought of her, Ma Petite was not a child.

Well. Technically, that wasn't strictly true. She was sixteen, so she was something like a child, but she wasn't the eternal toddler that gawkers and friends alike pretended she was. 

Jimmy wasn't much older — at seventeen-and-a-half, he was handsome and tall, with broad, beautiful shoulders that spindled down into gnarled claws.

Not claws. Hands. 

Soft hands.

Hands that lifted her tenderly as they trekked across the icy Midwestern plain, where the snow would have come up past her chest if she had to stand in it. Absently, she wondered if she could swim through it, if the miles of flat white could become her own private sea, where she could lose herself in the empty, quiet expanse.

Maybe people would pay to see that — the World's Tiniest Mermaid. 

Probably not. 

She didn't let anyone know that she carried a darkness in her, that these sad, melancholy thoughts would creep up on her and slink their way across her mind. It didn't happen all of the time, but it happened.

She wished that she could talk about it, sometimes. She wanted to reach out to Suzy or Ethel or Eve, and say yes, she felt it too, all of the pain and regret and shame that came with being openly, unavoidably strange. 

There was some power in making money off of people's stares, that was true. It brought her a sense of strength to be part of an institution that said yes, you can look at me, but my appearance is so valuable that you must pay me first. Two dollars for general admission. Five to hold. 

But it wasn't always enough. And that's when the thoughts would brew.

She wanted so very badly to express it, but. Paul had sad eyes. Eve had sad eyes. Suzy and Jimmy and Ethel and Meep and even Pepper, behind every playful smile or hearty laugh, their eyes betrayed an old hardness. A premature weariness, a lonely solitude, even in the close company of their kin. 

Yet their eyes would soften when they gazed upon Ma Petite, her unfailing optimism and pure heart kindling something like hope within them. Ma Petite, weak of muscle and stature, was the savior of them all.

So, for the sake of her found family, she swallowed her sorrow. She compartmentalized it, filed it away in a secret space in her heart. 

She'd learned long ago that appearances were everything.

She braided her hair and wore pretty gowns and made herself feel powerful and beautiful and mature. She read books as thick as herself and diligently practiced the violin.

She talked to Jimmy.

Ethel homeschooled them both, teaching them everything that she had learned as a girl, before puberty and hair growth and thyroid problems and whiskey put an end to it. After she had exhausted her limited education, she left them to help one another, assigning them weekly readings and tasks from whatever workbooks Elsa could get for them. 

Ma was brilliant at mathematics, just like her father in India had been, one of the few things she knew about the man. However, the finer points of grammar were mostly lost on her, seeing as she'd only started learning English within the last three or four years. In this way, she and Jimmy were opposites; Jimmy took to sentence structure and parts of speech and rhetoric like a champ, but he could barely remember basic times-tables. 

Jimmy, who was all quiet smiles and shy glances and growing confidence. He would look at her as they studied, sometimes, and Ma would know that he wasn't seeing her as a baby or a doll or angelic salvation. He didn't think, as many did, that her difficulty with English was because of mental regression, or that her small body meant that she was anything other than a full woman. His eyes fell on her just as they would any sixteen year old. He looked at her and saw a friend.

She kissed him, once, on a cold mid-January day. It was the middle of the night, and what had started off as a normal studying session shifted when Jimmy cleared his throat and pulled a white box from underneath his chair.

"What is that?" She asked him, as he slid it across the table.

He looked down, face heating a little, a slow grin spreading across his cheeks. "It's, ah, it's just somethin' I made for ya. Go 'head, Ma, open it."

She did, and threw her head back in laughter at the sight. It was a rabbit fur coat, with the head still attached, hollowed out like a hood. She lifted it out of its tissue paper wrapping, nuzzling the warm fur. "I love it, Jimmy. Thank you. Why do I deserve a gift?" 

Jimmy's eyes went a little dreamy, and he lay his head on the table, resting his chin in the crook of his arm. "Aw, hell, Ma. You deserve everything. See, I saw a picture of an Eskimo in that Life Magazine, once. He had on this fur coat made from a polar bear, the Eskimo did, and his face was right there in the bear's mouth. It let everybody who saw him know that he was a warrior. And I thought to myself, who's more of a warrior than Ma Petite? Nobody that I've met, that's for sure. So I went out and I got a couple 'a books from the library on the subject, figured out how to do it. Even got Eve to help me some with the sewing. She's real handy with a needle, I'll tell ya. Well, anyway, I hope you like it." 

There was something else there, Ma noticed, in Jimmy's voice. Something heavier, something a little nervous. Like there was some kind of hidden importance in this. 

She knew, deep in her stunted bones, exactly what it was.

She rubbed the impossibly soft coat between her thumb and forefinger. "I love it very much. You are wonderful. Also, I think that maybe you have a little crush on me, and if that is true, I will kiss you now."

He blinked in surprise, eyes widening, before nodding vigorously and reaching his hand out. She took it, pulling herself up onto the table, and pressed her lips to his. It was sweet and sad and stirring, and when they broke apart, Jimmy rested his forehead against her smaller one.

"You're the first girl I've ever loved, Ma," he whispered.

She stepped away, looking at him. Without breaking eye contact, she pulled on her new coat, sticking her head through the rabbit hole. Then, on tiptoes on the tabletop, she placed another, different kind of kiss to his cheek, before getting down and wordlessly motioning for him to leave her room.

This would never work, and she knew it. Maybe he did, too. 

But these things ought to be taken step-by-step, and he did have such gentle hands.


End file.
